teratornis

This week's Friday Five.

Boy there have been a lot of Friday Five sets I find compelling lately. Here's another!
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argentum_ls and I are still working diligently on writing and posting our Highlander: The Agent project, and as of last night's chapter, the series is clocking in at (exactly, due to some finicky wordsmithing on LS' part) 250k words!

It's so many words. I don't really know what we expected in terms of length when we started this series, we're both such pantsers that there's so little outright planning that goes into any of this, but we're both pretty excited to be at this point.

For a little bonus in honor of this occasion, here are some stats on the project!
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By the time we're finished with this series, the plan is to have 10 full multi-chapter casefic stories, and however many corresponding shorts we end up writing to go along with them. I'm still a little flabbergasted at how huge this project got, but it's been such a fun experience so far, all 250k words of it!

Runaway to the Stars is a long-term graphic novel project that I've been following for a number of years now. In light of its recently-launched (and already successful!) Kickstarter campaign for PDF and print formats of the comic, I thought I'd write a bit about this project.

This is going to get long, and contains images (all images are linked to the source, so they can be viewed embiggened in their natural habitat).( Read more... )

Edit: a fun addition to this, Jay Eaton has recently done a pretty fascinating Q&A about this project.

This week's Friday Five.

I do love talking about music, and to be honest I'd never really analyzed the stuff that gets stuck in my head most often, so this seems like a fun one to dive into.( Read more... )

LS and I have finished posting another of our Matthew McCormick main stories, and this one was a bit of a milestone for a couple of different reasons.

Small Town Mentality (30614 words) by argentum_ls, Teratornis
Chapters: 9/9
Fandom: Highlander: The Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Matthew McCormick, Original Characters, Gregor Powers
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, TV Logic, Minor Character Death
Series: Part 12 of Highlander: The Agent
Summary: With Talbot on leave, Matthew travels on his own to assist with a months-old serial case in a small, insular town. As he digs deeper and the murderer accelerates, he's forced to confront his assumptions about who is a friend, and who is a foe.

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Seen done by both rhi and argentum_ls.

01. Grab the nearest book.
02. Turn to page 126
03. The 6th full sentence is your life in 2026.

I'll be honest I mostly did this because I knew my D&D books were the closest to me. So from D&D 3rd Edition's Complete Arcane: A Player's Guide to Arcane Magic for All Classes:

"However, if the subject gains at least as many negative levels as it has Hit Dice, it dies."

. . . Cheery.

(From the lvl 7 spell Sword of Darkness.)

Back on the exchange rounds, I participated in this year's Crossworks exchange, and had a great time with it.

I don't believe it happened last year, so I was unfamiliar with it until this year, but I was excited to learn about it. Crossovers and fusions allow for such cool possibilities. Especially when it comes to the sci-fi/fantasy/supernatural sort of stuff I tend to enjoy, the worldbuilding alone is great to explore. And there's always the fun that comes with throwing characters from separate canons at each other and seeing where that goes, both in terms of character interactions and how each reacts to the problems inherent in other settings. There's a lot of great stuff to be explored with crossovers.

I went. . . a little over the top with signups. I requested somewhere around maybe 30 fandoms, in various potential configurations, and offered on around that many again. I don't know the actual count, it's a lot.

I was pretty thrilled with the assignment I ended up getting, and with the gift.

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Even outside of these two stories, it was a lot of fun to see what sort of crossovers people were requesting, and what people ended up posting. There are so many creative combinations to see, even among fandoms I'm not a part of.

Over all a super fun exchange experience, and definitely one I'd like to participate in again in the future.

Saw mentioned by a few people, actually grabbed from argentum_ls. I do love a good writing meme.

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A - Another Kind of Monster - Sanctuary (2008) - Helen Magnus, James Watson, Nigel Griffin
B - Better Than Flying - Ladyhawke (1985) - Isabeau d'Anjou/Etienne Navarre
C - Cry Defiance - Tale of the Shadow, by Sail North - The Captain & The Shadow
D - Die, And Live Again - Person of Interest (2011) - Harold Finch, John Reese
E - Echoed Voices - Original Work - Original Characters (interplanetary research vessel crew)
F - Few - Marvel Cinematic Universe/Stargate SG1 - Tok'ra
G - Grief like an Old Friend - Highlander the Series (1992) - Methos, Duncan MacLeod
H - Hours and Hands and Eyes - Saint of Steel, by T. Kingfisher - Bishop Beartongue
I - Interference - Highlander the Series (1992) - Matthew McCormick & Original Characters
J - Just a Little Trouble - Highlander the Series (1992) - Cory Raines/Gregor Powers, Anne Lindsey
K -
L - Last Breath, New Breath - Dungeons & Dragons (TTRPG)/Original Work - Original Characters (shipwrecked sailor, pirates)
M - My Purpose and Yours - Dungeons & Dragons (TTRPG)/Original Work - Original Characters (lizardfolk death cleric, grave robber)
N - Not Like Before - Ladyhawke (1985) - Isabeau d'Anjou/Etienne Navarre
O - Our Bodies an Atlas - Around the World in 80 Days (2021) - Phileas Fogg & Abigail "Fix" Fortescue & Jean Passepartout
P - People Like Us - Highlander the Series (1992) - Matthew McCormick, Original Characters, Reverend Bell, Derek Worth
Q -
R - Run, Run - Guild Wars 2 (Video Game) - Charr Player Character, Original Characters
S - Survivors - Original Work - Original Characters (superhero, retired superhero)
T - Tend the Flame - Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - Xenk Yendar & Original Character, Edgin Darvis
U - An Unexpected Success - Original Work - Original Characters (superheroes)
V - Voices of the Past - Original Work - Original Characters (first contact ambassador)
W - The Wake of the Flood - Highlander the Series (1992)/Horizon Zero Dawn (Video Game) - Aloy, Methos, Duncan MacLeod
X -
Y - A Year and a Day - Highlander the Series (1992) - Cassandra & Duncan MacLeod
Z -

22/26, out of 93 total fics. Not surprised I'm missing Q, X, and Z, but K is a little unexpected. Also discovered I have a lot of fic titles that start with C. Tried to get a good sampling of my less-populated fandoms, though I did miss a couple.

argentum_ls and I have just finished up the fourth main story in our Highlander: The Agent series, which is wild to me. I don't think either of us completely expected this series to get so extensive when we started it, but we're still having a great time with it.

Interference (27311 words) by argentum_ls, Teratornis
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Highlander: The Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Matthew McCormick & Original Characters
Characters: Matthew McCormick, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Case Fic, TV Logic, Kidnapping, Implied/Referenced Torture, Canon-Typical Violence, Minor Character Death
Series: Part 8 of Highlander: The Agent
Summary: Matthew and Talbot take on a case investigating a serial killer whose victims were all carrying swords at the times of their deaths. It should be the kind of case they're well prepared to handle, until an unexpected encounter proves just how dangerous this killer can be, even to an Immortal.

And some stuff about the process below the cut:( Read more... )

So argentum_ls and I have been continuing to work on and post our Highlander: The Agent series, a collection of stories focusing on Matthew McCormick, post-canon. We've been posting weekly for more than six months now (closer to seven, really), and we just wrapped up the third main story last night:

People Like Us (30641 words) by argentum_ls, Teratornis
Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: Highlander: The Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Matthew McCormick, Original Characters, Reverend Bell, Derek Worth
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Beheading, Minor Character Death, TV Logic
Series: Part 6 of Highlander: The Agent
Summary: While investigating a string of murders in Louisiana, Matthew gets an unexpected opportunity to reconcile some more of the mistakes of his own past.

So I wanted to talk about the process a little bit.( Read more... )